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Quite a few people seem surprised by Joe Biden’s lead in the polls. Some of this is because their friend circles aren’t representative of the Democratic Party electorate. But some of it’s deeper than that. Democrats say in generic polls that they’d prefer women to men, non-white candidates to white candidates, and younger candidates to older candidates. Given the fact that Democrats are more or less evenly divided between moderates and liberals, we could form some hypotheses about who ought to be leading right now.
The best hypothesis would be Kamala Harris. She’s a black women who’s probably neither too liberal nor too moderate for the Democratic electorate. She’s youngish and serves in a political office that’s a common launching pad for presidential campaigns. And we’d expect candidates like Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Amy Klobuchar to be doing OK. We might even think candidates like Julián Castro could take off.
To put it lightly, that’s not what we’re seeing. The two leading candidates, as of May 2019, are Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Two white guys older than any president-elect in the history of the US. Biden is arguably too conservative for the Democratic electorate, and Sanders is well to the left of the electorate. Even moving beyond Biden and Sanders, we have Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren as four of the top five. Warren isn’t as far left as Sanders, but she’s still well to the left of most Democrats. And Buttigieg is a white guy.
What’s going on here?
The Hypothesis
First of all, our hypothesis is pretty fucked so far. Among the candidates I listed as best guesses, only Harris is in the top 5. And her numbers are headed in the wrong direction. She very well might recover and even win the nomination, but her candidacy is looking much less promising than it was in February. The other candidates I listed are all polling in the low single digits. Gillibrand sometimes polls literally 0%.
All this could change. But so far, Democrats aren’t lining up behind the sorts of candidates they say they want. Instead, they prefer Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders.
Why?
Possibilities
1. Name Recognition
I think this is the one people mention most often, and they usually mention it in a dismissive tone. It goes something like this: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have universal name recognition. It’s very early in the race, and voters aren’t yet paying close attention. They pick the names they know. Therefore, Biden and Sanders are in the lead. It’ll all change once the debates start or at some other later date.
The trouble with this hypothesis is that there’s good evidence it’s not name recognition. Or at least that it’s not primarily name recognition. Candidates who poll well very early have a much larger chance of winning. Not only this, but Elizabeth Warren also has great name recognition. But she’s not doing as well as Biden or Sanders. And even the other candidates aren’t doing all that badly on the name recognition front.
If name recognition plays a role, I think it’s a small one.
2. Media Coverage
The idea here is that white men get more coverage, and so white men are leading the polls. Women and/or black candidates aren’t getting any media buzz, and are therefore shut out of the race. Alternatively, some versions of this argument claim that while women might be getting coverage, their coverage is more negative.
I think Kate Manne, author of Down Girl, has best argued for this thesis. And I think there might be something to it, particularly insofar as the focus is on the tenor of the coverage rather than the amount.
But this thesis is surprisingly poorly supported by the evidence. What we know about media coverage is that Biden is way ahead. That’s definitely consistent with the idea that media coverage is driving the polls. But after Biden, the thesis falls apart. Coverage is driven more by poll results than vice-versa. Pete Buttigieg rose in the polls well before his coverage rose. Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand receive more coverage than their poll numbers would suggest they ought to receive. Andrew Yang still receives less coverage that we’d expect given his numbers.
While Elizabeth Warren has gotten a lot of negative coverage over the Native American issue, she’s gotten great press for her policy proposals. Plus, both Biden and Sanders have received significant negative coverage. Sanders, in particular, is widely disliked by the press, especially major editorial pages.
3. Racism and/or Sexism
If Democrats say they don’t want white men, but it turns out they support white men anyway, one strong possibility is some combination of racism and sexism. The idea here is that Democrats have only a surface or generic preference for non-male and non-white candidates. But when they have to evaluate real people, their implicit biases, or other psychological mechanisms, take over. They find reasons not to like the women and/or non-white candidates in front of them.
If you’re looking for a source on this, Rebecca Solnit makes by far the best case for this thesis.
I don’t doubt that there’s some of this going on. But I’d point out that after Biden and Sanders, the picture here looks a lot more complicated. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris are doing especially well when it comes to endorsements and support from Democratic Party insiders. And white men who we’d expect to be the type of white guys who benefit from unearned privilege aren’t doing well at all. See, for example, Beto O’Rourke. Implicit bias is probably a factor, but it’s probably not the largest factor.
4. Ideological Polarization
This is one I don’t hear much about. But I’d like to make the case that a specific kind of ideological polarization is probably the largest factor in why Biden and Sanders lead.
What stands out to me about Biden and Sanders is that they’re the right-most and left-most candidates in the race, respectively. In a 20+ candidate field, there’s a lot of ideological muddle. Does anyone really know the ideological distinction between, say, Booker, Gillibrand, and O’Rourke? Maybe. But Biden and Sanders have staked out reasonably clear ground. Biden is the centrist who wants to unite the country from the middle. Sanders is at the left-most of mainstream American politics and wants to usher in social democratic change. Everyone else is somewhere between them.
I wrote some time ago offering free advice to each candidate. And in that post I noted that Elizabeth Warren’s short term goal ought to be to take vote from Sanders by ‘out-lefting’ him. This is exactly what she’s tried to do with things like her student debt proposal, and she’s won greater support in the polls as a result. This is at least tentative evidence that ideological polarization is what props up Biden and Sanders. Warren’s goal was to position herself on the very left end of things.
Why are Biden and Sanders in the Lead?
And so, here we are. Let’s revisit the original question of this post. Insofar as I’m able to tell, here’s why Biden and Sanders are in the lead: It’s mainly because they’ve taken up political positions at the far ideological ends of acceptable political thought within the pool of voters in Democratic Party primaries and caucuses. Things like name recognition and gender and race are supporting mechanisms, though they’re not the main factors. And amount of media coverage, particularly for Biden, is another supporting mechanism.
